Apologizing to myself
This post was prompted by an article in Yoga Journal, given to me by my mom, called “Forgiveness Heals.” There will be a companion post, a writing exercise about forgiving myself, sometime soon.
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry I stayed silent too long, spoke too softly to be heard, gave in too quickly.
My kindergarten classroom stretched along an endless hallway. There was a finger-painting station, a corner with cardboard building blocks, a book nook, a playhouse with a kitchen. Trim along the ceiling had numbers, one for each day of the school year, and we would hold a little classroom celebration every time we hit a number ending in zero. We sang, and drew, and played tag at recess. Once a week, I would leave the class and go down the hall to talk with the school psychologist. Even then, my parents knew something was wrong.
I’m sorry I didn’t tell her – in her office with reassuring colors and a calm far removed from the kindergarten class – that there had been some mistake, that my bowl-cut should have been reserved for a boy, could I trade in my button-down shirts for pigtails, please?
I’m sorry I chose blue, rather than pink. My bunk bed was blue (a hand-me-down, perhaps that doesn’t count), my walls after we moved were painted blue (light blue, not too manly), my walls after we moved again were blue (still light blue, still not too manly), my jeans were blue (but so were everyone’s, that doesn’t count either). The sky was blue as I looked up from the soccer field, wondering why I was playing on the boys team, watching kites overhead and wishing I could fly away, too. The cold water of Lake Michigan was blue, where I raced in wearing only swimming trunks, my skinny hairless body splashing to the surface and sending ripples toward my mom, who laughed, my dad, who laughed and splashed back.
I’m sorry I couldn’t control my/our/your body better. I tried. I tucked my penis between my legs and stood, looking at you in the mirror. I snuck into my parents’ room and tried on my mom’s one-piece bathing suits, tucking dangly bits out of the way and stuffing the top with tissues or socks. When she confronted me, I denied that I’d ever gone through her things and she let the matter drop. Even after I switched from briefs to boxers, I kept a pair of briefs hidden in a drawer because I liked the way they let me hold everything tight, up, out of the way, smooth.
I rejected the idea that hair could be springing up anywhere but the top of my head, denied that a foreign and unwanted growth was spreading across my skin, was repulsed by the way hairs painlessly slid out of follicles, like foul vegetation bursting from a decaying corpse. I wanted my skin to hurt with each hair’s pinprick, their escape into sunlight, to show how wrong and unnatural they were. I’m sorry my will and desire couldn’t suppress their growth. I’m sorry for the hormones and the hair and the height and all of the other h-words.
I’m sorry for all the photographs, especially the ones where I look happy. Where I forgot that the moment would be recorded in time as a testament to boyhood. Against girlhood. The pictures and home videos that stand as “proof”: here was a boy. The gifts and toys and chotchkies with that name on them; my name, ostensibly. Your name. Baby momentos and picture frames and penny banks and train statues. Yearbooks with inscriptions written to me, to him. “See you next year!” “Keep in touch!” If I could, I would take back the scrawled signatures on countless documents: homework, the inside cover of book after book after book, postcards.
Even my handwriting was passed from me to you, from me to me, from me to us. A handwriting which scrables to take hold on a horizontal line and causes me to wince when I see the same sloppy angles or curves as my father. Here, typing and technology has been a curse: my speed at typing made me impatient with the hand-written word, makes slowing down and taking my time seem an excrutiating waste. I saw my handwriting develope into something blocky and masculine and ugly, and I’m sorry I didn’t alter its course and gift you with something more graceful.
I’m sorry for the vocal chords which still crack on occasion, the singing voice that is pleasant only in a masculine range, the energy it takes to stay light and feminine. I’m sorry that yelling and projection usually involves dropping into a deeper range, one I don’t particularly like hearing from myself. That during vocal warmups or group exercises backstage I try to mask where my voice breaks.
I’m sorry I didn’t spirit away makeup to practice putting on, didn’t enlist girlfriends to help me learn how to look pretty. I’m sorry I left you with hands that shake and a sense of overwhelming confusion and inadequacy.
I’m sorry that you run into parents of childhood friends and enemies, that interactions which should be quick and quickly forgotten become slow and prying and awkward. That mom receives a hug and you receive a handshake. Because, in their eyes, you’re not the woman she is.
I’m sorry my existence has given such power to others, that they can bring you crashing down with a pause or a pronoun.
I’m sorry the only shoes I had to wear to my brother’s funeral were platforms, leaving me towering over family and friends and mourners, because my wardrobe was/is still woefully incomplete. Bending down to give and receive hugs, over and over, pretending I felt confident as the woman I was presenting as. Being ignored by cousins who you didn’t want to talk to anyway but would have liked the courtesy to be acknowledged by them.
I’m sorry I stayed silent too long, spoke too softly to be heard, gave in too quickly.
I’m sorry it’s difficult to correct the mistakes I made.
I’m sorry you’re hurting.
I’m sorry.
Themocracy
I’m not sure if this is what you’re aiming for, but this post made me cry.
I’m not glad I made you cry, but I’m glad you appreciated it. I wasn’t aiming for anything in particular, other than trying to work through my issues.
The crying was good for me. I hope you work through your issues.